CRMC’s Buffy Key: Reinvesting In People Is The Goal

Cookeville Regional Medical Center’s new interim CEO Buffy Key says her primary goal is to bring back a sense of closeness amongst the staff.

Key said the pandemic left a lot of the medical facility’s staff feeling closed off from one another. She said by improving the relationship among hospital employees, it will translate into better care for its patients.

“I think we have to focus today, starting yesterday actually, refocus on our people,” Key said. “Our people make this hospital. Our employees, our medical staff, and I think we have to reinvest in them. And including in that reinvestment is not only are we paying them enough for the hard work that they do, but being transparent with them.”

Key said that transparency and communication would facilitate the hospital getting back to being a team.

Key said one issue she plans to address is recruiting more employees to grow the hospital’s team and its capability. However, in order to be successful in expanding the medical facility, she said it is important to look inward and make sure the hospital is doing all it can to retain its employees.

“I don’t think we can survive in healthcare in 2023 without learning from the lessons we got in 2022, ’21, ’20, and there’s not a healthcare facility in this country right now that’s not struggling with financial hardships, staffing issues, those types of things. Just expectations,” Key said. “I would change a lot if I could, the pandemic didn’t allow us to do that. When the pandemic happened and we started to close down and get closed off from each other, which certainly isn’t anyone’s fault, we all kind of closed down on ourselves just trying to survive and taking care of our patients, I think we lost that communication.”